How to Help Students Choose Books to Read

In their book Moving Forward With Literature Circles, Day, Spiegel, McLellan and Brown give a simple, effective way to help students learn how to choose their own books to read. They write that we should get students to move beyond choosing books based on the five-finger method, and instead “choose books based on skimming a passage and determining automatically whether a book is right for them, the way adults choose books.” Here’s their strategy for helping students learn how to select books:

Materials: A large selection of books that span difficulty levels, from easy chapter books to middle- and high-school trade books.

1. Place students in groups of four to five.
2. Assign students the task of sorting the books by difficulty and creating a list of the books, from easiest to most difficult. Students will need to read at least a paragraph of some books, possibly more of others.
3. At the end of the activity, asks groups to present their lists to the whole class and have them report on how they determined the order. Have them tell if there were disagreements among the group members and why.
4. For the classroom library, ask each student to create a list of three books that are “easy,” three that are “difficult,” and three or more that are “just right.” Label the books according to the students’ criteria.

From Moving Forward With Literature Circles, page 52.

This is a terrific lesson for several reasons. First, it’s an authentic exercise that has real meaning: others will use their lists to select books. Second, it introduces students to lots of books they might not ordinarily look at. Finally, it helps students to survey books quickly and effectively.

For more practical ideas like this one, check out Moving Forward With Literature Circles, and be sure to visit the Teen Literacy Tips Bookstore for the best resources for teaching literature in grades 7-12. Every purchase made through the bookstore helps with the costs of running this site.